Help with creativity.. Am I doomed to 9x9s?

[Tyrindor]

I am not a creative person, I generally power through the mods with my 9x9 stone brick square houses. I'd like to change that because getting only 30 hours out of worlds isn't very appealing. I want more than infinite power and infinite materials.

The problem is.. I just don't even know where to begin. I am not creative at all, I don't even really know what looks good. I've barely touched carpenter blocks and chisel. Building something that is functional, OCD friendly, and looks good seems almost impossible.

Can anyone recommend some 1.7.10 lets play videos, with people that generally build good looking functional structures that I could watch?

 

[Celestialphoenix]

Carpenters blocks/chisel/FMP ect is diving into the deep end when you don't know how to swim. You don't need infinite power/materials to make stuff pretty- I personally find it gets in the way as theres too many choices.

Your best bet is slowing down slightly, and playing around with looks as you set up a machine.​

It sounds like you're about to start a fresh world anyway, so when you go- just build something out of what you have on your doorstep (wood). Experiment with logs and planks. Just ignore tech progression for now- get yourself somewhere nice to live.

I'm guessing [again] you're following DireWolf, so similar modpack style.
Tinkers construct is a fairly easy break into making things pretty. Few workbenches in your home, and the smeltery;

Before you set up, take a step back and see where it'll look good in your build. Don't just plonk it anywhere- plan ahead and design in. Where will it look good, and how can I make it look better?
​

I'll stop there- give it a go. Post a couple of screenshots in this thread.

 

[Tyrindor]

Carpenters blocks/chisel/FMP ect is diving into the deep end when you don't know how to swim. You don't need infinite power/materials to make stuff pretty- I personally find it gets in the way as theres too many choices.

Your best bet is slowing down slightly, and playing around with looks as you set up a machine.​

It sounds like you're about to start a fresh world anyway, so when you go- just build something out of what you have on your doorstep (wood). Experiment with logs and planks. Just ignore tech progression for now- get yourself somewhere nice to live.

I'm guessing [again] you're following DireWolf, so similar modpack style.
Tinkers construct is a fairly easy break into making things pretty. Few workbenches in your home, and the smeltery;

Before you set up, take a step back and see where it'll look good in your build. Don't just plonk it anywhere- plan ahead and design in. Where will it look good, and how can I make it look better?
​

I'll stop there- give it a go. Post a couple of screenshots in this thread.

My next world will be RR3.3 when it comes out. Right now i'm just messing around in RR3.2 trying to learn new mods.

 

[KingTriaxx]

I've never built a 9x9, except one Xycraft tank, but that doesn't count since I wasn't living in it.

As for building for looks, I find that form should follow function. My current house in Monster has three six block tall floors and one that's two blocks tall. That way I have lots of space to put stuff up on the walls.

My suggestion would be start small. Grab some carpenter's wedge slopes, and chip the corners off your house. Then place the slopes there and put the bricks on. Basically you're looking to eliminate the sharp edges on the outside. Push your door out one block, then use wedge slopes on the inside and outside to again, eliminate the sharp corners. Run wedges around the outer wall at the bottom, and see how you like it. If you want the house to look sunken in, use grass on those slopes and it will look like it's pushed it's way down into the earth.

On the inside, replace the outermost ring of flooring with stairs, facing so the lower step is to the outside. You can make the house seem larger, by knocking out the middle of the walls, replacing the outermost section with stairs all facing toward the middle. Then place carpenters in the open spaces, and hit them once with the hammer. That'll turn them into slabs in the direction you hit them. So a vertical one, if you hit the side. Place one, and hit it, then place the remaining blocks touching that, and they'll automatically turn into that same kind of slab. Then place in the bricks again, or use some fancy looking chiseled glass. If you go with the bricks, you can place a second brick on a carpenter's block/wedge/slab, and make it stick out just a bit, which could give more texture. I'm not sure how it looks with glass, but I wouldn't do that myself.

The point of all that being, that even a 9x9 can look awesome if you put the effort into making it do so.

Also, four stairs placed rightside up and upside down makes for a monster proof, glassless window, and looks really awesome.

 

[CuriousKey]

First: If you're not that confident with building yet, it's probably a good idea to avoid carpenter and chisel. Too many choices hampers creativity rather than aiding it. In fact, I'd recommend sticking mostly to vanilla blocks unless some mod block particularly grabs you, just to limit your choices (which is one of the best ways of unlocking your creativity)

Also, when it comes to choosing a colour/texture scheme, choose three blocks to work with. (a strong contrasting pair with a detail block is a good general rule to follow. For example, stone brick and nether brick for contrast, with stone slabs as detail).

Start off small. Try making a simple house/structure, and just think about how you can use the textures of your three blocks to give it contrast and detail, and think about adding/removing bits to make it more detailed. Don't be afraid of making something that looks bad at first, you can always tear down a block you place

 

[malicious_bloke]

Just some little extra aesthetic advice (maybe irrelevant to you but it helps me).

1. Plan ahead.

Try to get a mental picture of what you want, enough to get a basic floorplan so you can clear the ground, and then work out how many levels you want after.

For framerate reasons, it's best to spread yourself out rather than squeeze everything into the same chunk, ESPECIALLY when you start having tons of automated processes running. I'd recommend moving the majority of automated things to outbuildings some distance away.

For rooms with machines that need cabling, make a 2-skin wall (inner/outer with a one block gap in between), this helps to hide ugly cables and lets you build your machines into the wall itself.

2. Lighting.

The best builds have their light sources made into features, rather than just torches or lamps tacked on as an afterthought. For example my current house has 3x3 marble pillars out front with the centre block being an Openblocks tank full of liquid glowstone. My portal room has a floor made of an alternating pattern of fancy nether brick and lava source blocks all under TC clear glass. I try to avoid "standard" light sources and come up with cuter ways of illuminating myself.

 

[rhn]

Also try and avoid building anything in a flat landscape. Yes it is easier to build in a flat landscape, but you are doomed to end up with extremely boring results. Find a cool/challenging landscape and then shape your base accordingly. Keep terraforming to a minimum, only fix stuff to make it look more natural.
This way you get much more dynamic bases.

 

[KingTriaxx]

If you're looking for inspiration, don't look at rhn. You'll just get depressed.

Seriously though, rhn's bases are awesome, and there's an entire thread in the Community Showcase that shows off great bases.

That said, I disagree with starting simple. I much prefer to jump in over my head, and then try to swim. Go berserk then cut down to what you can handle.

 

[CuriousKey]

If you're looking for inspiration, don't look at rhn. You'll just get depressed.

Seriously though, rhn's bases are awesome, and there's an entire thread in the Community Showcase that shows off great bases.

That said, I disagree with starting simple. I much prefer to jump in over my head, and then try to swim. Go berserk then cut down to what you can handle.

And if you want a happy medium, you can always go for something simple and just add to it

 

[Lordlundar]

Well, to start off with I look at Direwolf's basic 9x9 and I see something tragically missing:

Windows

Everything he builds just has solid walls. Great for mounting things but dull to look at.

Begin with basic house designs. Look at a house in the real world and think about how you can replicate it. Then do another, and so on. Then start to think a little more outside the box. Look at some cliff side buildings and keep going from there.

 

[KingTriaxx]

Ah, you know what? Sl1pg8r did a handful of Let's Build videos. Both modded and vanilla.

 

[asb3pe]

Someone (I dunno who) said the famous phrase, "Creativity is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration". What that means (I think) is that you don't just snap your fingers and instantly be "creative". Instead, you have to work at it... you need to know all the blocks in the game, and then you need to experiment with all those blocks until you learn the combinations of blocks that makes you go "that looks cool!". That's the "perspiration" part, all 99% of it.

Mind you, I don't consider myself to be very "creative" either, so I'm not trying to pretend I'm some kind of "creativity expert". I struggle with it too, but then again I don't put my 99% perspiration into the game. Probably more like 20% at best.

The best way to be creative, IMO, is to copy what you see others doing. Watch videos, as everybody is saying. Then take those ideas and begin experimenting. That's where you'll begin to put your own touch on your builds and develop your own style.

One thing I did differently in my current world is to build my house elevated by one block. Instead of building on the ground, I placed a floor down and used stairs at my doors. It looked pretty ugly, until I took shears and cut down leaf blocks and surrounded the house with them - hedges! And now I think my house looks really nice, and different from my usual style. It made me feel creative! Even tho it isn't very innovative or spectacular. But I love the way my house looks, and that's all that matters to me.

 

[Azzanine]

Just start small, make a building that isn't a box even if you just transfer from a cube to a sphere/ cylinder. Take inspiration from the real world; while boxy, factories aren't always rectangle, they usually have a sloped roof, sometimes curved. Play many RPGs/ watch many fantasy? borrow design aspects from those for magic builds, heck any build really.

OpenBlocks Build guide is essential for building proper shapes other then simple rectangular prisms. Also try a simple design principal of selecting 3 complimentary block types and designate each to the floor, walls and roof maybe a 4th block type for embellishments.

As for videos, just type "lets build minecraft" in to Youtube, and watch what you can. I can think of one decent Lets Builder, while they are overtly horrible at playing with the mods Yogscast Sjinn is a rather competent builder. Of course most his vids are creative mode a lot of the design principals he talks about still apply. But he's obviously not the only one, not even close to the best one, just watch all the lets plays you can.

 

[Not_Steve]

The incredible builder @Saice created a series called "This old 9x9" that shows how even a 9x9 can be stylish if you understand aesthetics. You can find it here

 

[Tyrindor]

The incredible builder @Saice created a series called "This old 9x9" that shows how even a 9x9 can be stylish if you understand aesthetics. You can find it here

Thanks i'll give those a watch.